Before him, the striker of the St. Petersburg HC SKA Mikhail Vorobyov, the forward of the HC Yugra Vladislav Lukin, and the pupil of the HC Salavat Yulaev Anvar Suleymanov received a five-year suspended sentence.
The Leninsky District Court of Ufa today will consider a criminal case against the hockey player of the Magnitogorsk club “Metallurg” Semyon Koshelev, who is accused of giving a bribe for evading military service and for studying at the university. Koshelev is far from the only hockey player to whom claims have arisen from the Ministry of Defense.
According to investigators, Semyon Koshelev, not wanting to serve in the army, bought a military ID through an intermediary in Ufa, and then entered UGNTU for a bribe. The defendant pleaded guilty. Farit Samigullin acted as an intermediary in this corruption scheme.
And this is not the first time this name appears in cases of this kind. The district courts of Ufa have already considered the criminal cases of athletes who communicated with Samigullin about obtaining military tickets. Last autumn, the 25-year-old striker of the St. Petersburg HC SKA Mikhail Vorobyov was fined 2 million rubles, the 25-year-old striker of the HC Yugra Vladislav Lukin – 2.2 million rubles, the ex-midfielder of the youth team of FC Ufa, 23-year-old Dmitry Belozerov – for 400 thousand rubles, and the 22-year-old pupil of the HC “Salavat Yulaev” Anvar Suleimanov was sentenced to five years of probation. All of them were in the case of either giving a bribe or attempted to give a bribe.
Whether they went to serve after that is not specified, but this certainly does not threaten Koshelev, Ivan Samarin, a lawyer in military law, is sure:
“Any citizen who is fit for health reasons and has reached the age of 27 is enrolled in the reserve of the armed forces. From next year, in the upper limits, the age of conscripts rises to 30 years, so if a person manages to enroll in the reserve this year and apply for it through the draft board, he will no longer be called up. If he was 25 years old and the decision of the draft board on enrollment in the reserve would be canceled, since he has a military ID, then there was such a decision of the draft board. In this case, he must serve.”
It is known that Ivan Fedotov, the main goalkeeper of the Russian national team at the Olympic Games, was sent to serve. He was detained at the request of the military prosecutor’s office on suspicion of evading military service last summer. And later sent to the army. Why such interest appeared to hockey players? Aleksey Kylasov, head of the Center for Traditional Games and Sports of the Russian Research Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage named after Likhachev, argues:
“This still applies to commercial clubs. Because, for example, the clubs of CSKA, Dynamo – by default they cannot get into this action, because in this case the athletes are already military personnel who are in these army clubs or clubs of some power units, that is, in fact already are serving. It’s the same in football: there is CSKA, the rest of the clubs are also commercial. But still, it seems to me in this case that football somehow turns out to be more influential, or something, a sport in Russia. That is why they are more loyal to football, listen and keep the players.”
In the case specifically with Ivan Fedotov, who had gone into the army, many then paid attention to the fact that on June 30, his contract with CSKA ended. And shortly before that, the hockey player signed a one-year contract with the Philadelphia Flyers NHL club. But he did not succeed in leaving for the States.
